


I Don't Like Mondays

by veryconfidentsandwichshapedfreedom



Category: Divergent - All Media Types, Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cocaine, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Fucked Up, Gen, Gun Violence, Guns, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mental Health Issues, Murder, One Shot, Past Drug Use, Rampage Killers, Shooting, Shooting Guns, Shopping Malls, Songfic, Underage Drug Use, Violence, mass shootings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 14:30:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12256260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veryconfidentsandwichshapedfreedom/pseuds/veryconfidentsandwichshapedfreedom
Summary: And he can see no reasons'Cause there are no reasonsWhat reason do you need to die, dieToday, Peter is no one. Tomorrow, he'll be famous.





	I Don't Like Mondays

**Author's Note:**

> I have fucking awful timing. I started this the day I posted The Stranger when I got sucked down the James Huberty and Brenda Spencer rabbithole. I finished the first chapter today. Fuck me, right?
> 
> so uh
> 
> drew thinks peter is the second coming of jesus christ and peter shoots up a mall and molly is a recovering crack addict and i think i tried crack and at least six other drugs in order to come up with this plot

"You know what I expect of you," Peter says, his high voice stern. His striking green eyes are hard and cold, absent of any emotion that could define him as human, and he glares down at me with a detached expression empty enough to send a sharp frost shooting through my spine. He takes a step toward me. He stands while I sit, so he can loom over me like a supervillain over an incapacitated superhero in await of my response.  
  
Peter is dominant. Even someone who was completely blind and deaf would notice that seconds after they walked into the room, just from the weight of the dynamic in the air when he addresses me. Normally, and for anyone else, him meeting my gaze would be a sign of respect and a subtle indication that he considers me an equal, but he uses even what should build me up to tear me down, and for that, I have respected his boldness with every breath I have taken and with every breath I will ever take. And he knows that, all of that, which is why he did not  _ask_ me if I wanted to go along with this, but told me instead. He knows I'm too fond of him to say no, not that I'll ever earn the right to do anything but obey my god.  
  
"Yes, Peter."  
  
That is all I need to say.  
  
That is all I am  _allowed_  to say.  
  
On the couch cushion next to mine, Molly shifts uncomfortably, restlessness seizing her body and not just her usual fidgeting fingers. I wonder what she's thinking. Even as a self-admitted lackey, she was never as loyal to Peter as I was, always the first to get up and move on if the going became tough, even when I would stay behind until long after Peter had given in, fighting for what he wanted, what he deserved. Perhaps this is too much to ask of her, that she march to her death and take as many lives as possible alongside us.  
  
Or maybe it's not. Molly, for all the times she's abandoned us, has been more loyal than anyone but Peter and I. She's stuck around longer than anyone else would have. And, admittedly, she has always enjoyed the chaos. She starts fires just to watch them burn. She is an arsonist of humanity, a wrecking ball for all that is good and fair, and she would want nothing more than to be recognized and remembered in death for causing the chaos she  always wanted to see in life. She would want to see this happen, no matter the cost. She would want to take part in this. She would want to march in alongside us and do just as much to cement Peter's goal as reality, even if only for self-serving reasons.  
  
"And you won't pussy out?" Peter tenses his jaw tighter, like he's trying to strike fear into my heart with only a glower.  
  
I let a smile curve across my face. It's so hard  _not_  to smile when I see him. So hard, when I'm watching someone perfect. So hard, when he is a king with a soon-to-be immortal legacy and I am a mere peasant who has been blessed with the glory of his presence. So hard, when he drags my failing feet alongside him while he sprints through a world of people who walk.  
  
So hard when it's him.  
  
"I'll do anything for you, Peter."  
  
I wait in silence for the victory of his approval. I want to see his eyes light up, and the shine of his teeth against the flickering light from the dying fluorescent bulb above us. I want to see that I've pleased him.  
  
He doesn't even glance back at me.  
  
"Good. And what about you?" he demands, stepping back and looking toward Molly.  
  
Now, we get to learn what she'll do, what I was wondering about. Even if she leaves, admitting she isn't interested, or that she thinks we're crazy, or throwing our lives away, I doubt she'll report us to the police for what we're conspiring to do; Peter wouldn't have brought her here, to his apartment, to the place where he's keeping his guns, where he has his maps and his plans and his records, and involved her so directly, if he had any belief she'd betray us, no matter how small. Maybe he knows she'll agree, the same way he knew I would. He wouldn't risk it. He's Peter. He's not stupid. He's never been stupid.

Molly hesitates; her brown skin, dotted with flecks of acne and plump, round whitish scars surrounded by rings of pink, glistens with oil in the dim light. Why won't she respond immediately? Is she going to tell on us? Is she going to foil everything Peter has slaved over for so long?  
  
I comfort myself again. I must trust in Peter's knowledge. I must follow his guidance. Molly is no threat to us. At most, she will prove to be a minor inconvenience.  
  
Maybe she's just not yet willing to give up her life when she's spent so much effort trying to get clean. She started smoking crack early in our sophomore year of high school, and after five, almost six years, she's finally spent ten months out and unburdened by her habit. She's gotten healthier, not that it means much for someone who looks like Molly, and though she still carries the scars from picking at what she described as a burning, crawling sensation on her arms and legs, she's gained weight and gone from a skeletal state back to fairly muscular and well-fed, and she no longer seems as on-edge as she did before, when she was jumpy and shaky and perpetually sweaty. If I had fought all that off, battled through one of the worst addictions possible, I would be more than a little indecisive, too.  
  
But this is Peter we're talking about.  _Peter_. He's worth everything Molly has gone through and more. He's everything we could ever dream of staying loyal to. The air seems thick, heavy, like it is a burden upon my aching shoulders. With agony cleaving my chest in two at the thought of my best friend abandoning the only person I value more than her, I await Molly's reply.

"They build, we permit. They fuck with us, we destroy."

Good choice. I can't stop the feeling that creeps through my bones, the one that warms me and fills me with undiluted joy all at once. She knew what to do. She toyed with my emotions, dragged me beneath suspense, and she is all the better for it.

"Then let's go down in history." A smirk reaches across Peter's face; he directs his attention toward the front of the room, then turns back to us.

"Right here," he explains, taking a few steps backward, one after another in quick succession like he has eyes in the back of his head and no fear of tripping, until he reaches the table situated ahead of us like a stage, so we can see everything, everyone, and hear perfectly whatever Peter is to tell us, "is my Ruger 10/22."

He seizes the gun closest to him with one fist around the stock. When he pulls it up to his chest, levelling it to his body, he balances it by tucking the tip of the sight on top of his wrist. He's openly displaying it to us, as if we've never seen one before. He must value our involvement in the plan, if he's willing to stretch his own patience to ensure that we, the weaker, the slower, the less intelligent, know every in and out of what we're about to do for him, our final act of servitude. Maybe that's proof he's truly fond of us, that he's willing to sacrifice his own time to guarantee that we go out properly and without a hitch.

What he holds is a rifle, sleek and black, with an elongated barrel crafted from metal so dull, or so caked with soot, that its shine is smothered, and it appears to be plastic at first glance. It looks like it could do some damage. Maybe this is the one Peter plans to wield. 

Out of us, there is no reason Peter should not have the most powerful weapon. He is the strongest of us physically, and mentally, and emotionally, and what he holds should reflect that essential fact of our dynamic. He deserves nothing less than the best. He will be leading us to our deaths; we might as well die with him looking as powerful as I know he is, inside and out.

"Your dad used to shoot one of these up at the range, right?" Peter asks, glancing to Molly. A smile blooms over his pink lips as he waits for her response, like he's giving her a wrapped gift he knows she'll love the moment she opens it. He must be asking only for the dramatic effect, or just to ensure he's correct. Probably the latter. Peter likes drama, but he dislikes the unnecessary, and any extra barriers between him and his goals.

As much as I want to see Molly's face light up in reaction to Peter's unselfish consideration of her qualifications, I don't dare look away from Peter. He is speaking. I have no right to blatantly disrespect what he's saying by not giving him my full and complete attention.

"I watched him every damn Wednesday for ten years of my life. It was incredibly boring!" Molly says. The sound of flesh smacking against flesh snaps through the air; she must have slapped her fist against her palm for emphasis. "But at least it'll amount to something."

Peter hesitates, glancing down at the dark weapon cradled against his arms. He looks absurd with his palms facing outward, in a display that would normally be read as indignance or an attempt at self-defense, and he looks even more absurd with the rifle steadied across his broad chest like he's confused on how to hold it. But that isn't enough to quell the fear dwelling within me, building and swelling and expanding deep in my mind, the fear inspired by the sharp glimmer of his dark green eyes and the tensed muscles bunched under the skin of his forearms and the unpredictableness of it all.

He's terrifying. He would never hurt me, but he's terrifying nevertheless. If he can scare me, someone who he trusts, someone who trusts him, he is certainly going to strike terror into the collective hearts of America, strangers who will know nothing about him except that he and his two accomplices shot up a shopping mall on a suicide mission.

"I'd toss it over to you, but I think it's loaded. I can't remember." Peter sets the rifle back on the table with an audible thump so loud that it seems as if the entire table is about to collapse onto the dirty, smudged laminate floor in an explosion of splinters and bullets.

Then he grabs for the next gun, and this time, he holds it out in front of him, one hand clutched onto the stock, one hand wrapped over the barrel. 

I'm the black sheep of our little clique in that I'm not familiar with guns. Peter owns an assortment of them, some obtained illegally, some entirely legal, some that don't work, a scarily large amount that do. He stashes them in his apartment like they're going to be the only viable currency after an impending economic collapse. And Molly's father practically lived on the gun range. Every summer since she was five, until her parents divorced in eighth grade, he took her out into the countryside for an extended hunting trip that left us a duo and not a trio for at least a week at a time. She'd come back with wild stories of bagging coyotes at dawn, and woodchucks and skunks all day, only to shoot yet more coyotes at dusk. She once said she had a body count higher than Nazi Germany's. But even I, with only secondhand experience, can tell the motherfucker Peter's got is a shotgun. 

And a pump-action one at that, with a ribbed grip. It looks like it could blast a three-mile brick wall to rubble with one pull of the trigger. This one will  _certainly_ be Peter's.

For a moment, I imagine him stomping in heavy black boots over pasty, eggshell linoleum, with a fervent anger that displays itself in every step, every thunderous impact. A trenchcoat, as dark as his footwear, swishes behind him, caught around his body at the border of loose and tight. Beneath him, there are bodies, scattered in pools of their own blood, blood that glistens just as the floors and the polished toes of Peter's boots do. There are so many bodies that I can't focus on one. I can't count them. There is innumerable suffering, innumerable pain.

Peter pumps the shotgun and fires at an imaginary target, the motion so clean and tight that it appears to have found its way into his muscle memory and become completely familiar. There is a scream. Blood spatters over Peter's nose, travelling from an indecipherable source. He laughs, low and deep in his chest. 

There he stands, surrounded by the terror and the blood and the death, engulfed and stewing in the misery he's created,  _everything_  he hoped to achieve through this fully realized. He is happy. After so many years, he is genuinely happy at finding the place in history he hunted and slaved for his entire life.

This shotgun means everything to him.

This shotgun means everything to me.

"Mossberg 500," Peter says, as if he's reciting it off a script, or reading it from a book. "Probably the  _second_ most destructive thing I've got here."

"Then why didn't you offer it to me?" 

Molly's voice draws out with a high, uncharacteristic whine; I can't determine if she is joking or genuine in her envy. Peter's reply will gauge that for me.

He shoots her a glare.

"Shut your face."

There's a familiar roughness to it, around the edges, as it leaves his mouth, but it is trailed by amusement, a wide grin that exposes the surface of his perfect teeth, straight and white as snow, without flaw or crack or stain under the light. I fall apart inside because I am not the one who caused it. I am repaired again by his smile.

"Drew," Peter says, looking back to me. I perk up immediately, insides on fire, focus unbroken. I'm in love with the way he says my name, like he's the only one who knows it. 

I'm not sure what he's about to tell me. I like it when he singles me out, when his attention belongs to me and me alone, but I can't help but feel a creeping sensation of guilt, like I've done something wrong, crawling hot over my skin with its prickly feet and making every hair on my body stand on end. I want, more than anything else, to have done everything right for him. But I don't know if that's the case. Right now, with the date of our deaths, the day we'll become famous, looming ominously over us, I don't think I know anything.

"This one I know for a  _fact_  isn't loaded," Peter jokes, though I don't really process it enough to laugh; I hear him, his voice, but I am not listening. He tosses the shotgun into my lap.

My eyes shoot downward. A dull pain seeps throughout my thighs as the metal slams down on me. I feel everything and nothing all at once. 

He trusts me. He trusts me enough to give me something powerful, something that will give me a fighting chance at doing as much damage as he will.

Am I an equal? No. I will never be his equal. I  _can_  never be his equal. I am slow and stupid and my star is little more than a distant flicker of light at the side of the blazing tear in the fabric of the night sky, exposing the heavens above, that he is. I am nothing, compared to him. I am nothing compared to anyone. 

But now he has blessed me.

I will do this. 

I will do this without even the most fleeting hint of regret bounding through my mind.

I will do this for him and him alone.

I will  _kill._

Either out of respect for him or as a result of the fact that when I try to move my lips, they are paralyzed, I wordlessly peer back up at him, and I smile. I smile for what he has brought for me. I smile at his faith in me. I smile for what we are to do together. I smile for everything at that moment, and the joy I feel inside.

Finally, my dry, aching throat manages to push out a single word.

"Thanks."

He will think I am thanking him for the gun, but I am thanking him for the privilege to be his right-hand man, the one he will trust and depend on over all else.

I don't need to tell him that, though, because the crooked little smirk that eases over the corner of his lips is reassurance enough that he already knows.

And as he turns to the table one final time, to grab the gun I know he will wield, and his maps, and his timeline, and everything an impulsive person like him had to create to convince someone, whether it be himself or us, that he is serious about this, I know we will find immeasurable success.

We have  _him_. Why wouldn't we?


End file.
